Unconscious, frothing in the mouth, holding ice packs: Migrant workers are the biggest casualty of India’s worst heatwave
Anumeha Yadav
New Delhi: On Thursday afternoon, the busy campus of Safdarjung hospital had patients and attendants trying to protect themselves from the searing heat in the shade of the building and under trees. A tall security guard, in a black and red uniform, stepped out of the hospital’s new emergency block and called out: “Rohit ke saath kaun-Rohit ke saath kaun? Who is with Rohit?” he repeated. No one responded.
Rohit, who is registered in the hospital with only one name, was unconscious and had not responded to treatment in the past eight hours. Doctors attending to him estimated his age at just over 20. No one knew his full name or exact age. Critically ill Rohit is amongst the tens of thousands of migrant workers who come to New Delhi to earn a living, and are the worst hit in an unprecedented heat wave sweeping across northern India.
Since mid-May, temperatures in the concrete-heavy national capital region have breached historical highs. As per an analysis by Carbon Brief, a UK publication on climate change, after a brief four-day respite, from May 12 onwards, the city witnessed 16 days when the temperature breached the 45 degree Celsius mark.
Nights have been warm, with even the minimum temperatures hovering around 40 degree Celsius on six consecutive nights. There is no respite in even the pre-dawn hours. The cumulative effect of this severe and relentless heat has taken a toll on the city’s migrant workers, said doctors at Safdarjung hospital.
Doctors treating Rohit in the “Red Zone”, a ward for critically ill patients brought to the public hospital’s emergency, told The Migration Story that he was brought with “loss of consciousness” on June 20. He was running a temperature of over 105 degree Fahrenheit (40.5 C). Rohit worked the oven as a cook in a pizza delivery service, an attendant who was his roomate informed the hospital staff. Working in the big city, miles away from his village, he shared a small room with others in similar jobs.
His roommates told the hospital staff that when they left the room for their night shift on Tuesday, Rohit had returned from his evening shift. He was exhausted and ran a high fever when they left. That night stretching to the morning of June 19 would be the warmest recorded in 60 years in Delhi, scientists said.
When they returned at 6 am after their night-shift, Rohit was unconscious, unresponsive, his head burning. By the time they brought him to the hospital, he had to be immediately “intubated”, put on a ventilator to breathe. Away from his family back in the village – his address column is blank in hospital records – Rohit lay all alone on Bed Number 4 on Thursday morning, dressed in a pair of shorts and a vest, with tubes running down his dark, thin face. His heartbeat was racing at 170 per minute, his blood pressure ‘beyond safe limits’, said treating doctors. His chances of recovery were poor, said the junior resident doctor treating him.
On the upper floors of the same building in “ER Ward 13”, Sunil Kumar Singh, a migrant worker in his 50s from Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, who works in a metal factory, has been on life-support for heatstroke since June 17. He worked 25 km away in NOIDA industrial area in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh without a written contract or any social security benefits in a factory that makes metal ware.
When Singh was brought to the Safdarjung hospital, he had a fever of 106 F(41.1C), seven degrees above what is normal for a human and much higher than 104F(40C), the standard used at the hospital for diagnosing a heatstroke.
A gaunt man, he lay in the ward with his face covered in tubes and two ice packs wrapped with a gamcha (cotton scarf) on his chest.
His older son Aman Singh, who waited by his side, said that Singh worked as a “helper” in the same factory since 2022 and had fainted on the shop-floor on Monday evening, when his shift was about to get over. Several factories in the industrial area have no air conditioning, employees like Singh work under fans, routinely standing for up to nine hours every day. Aman, who left his temporary job last year, added that his father was working to support the family.
“His co-workers arranged a vehicle to drop him to this hospital and called me here on the phone,” Aman said. “He remained unconscious and has been on oxygen support for two days. Then yesterday, when he became conscious for some time, he started vomiting.”
On a small table, he pointed to a fruit milkshake he had got for his father, which the doctors told him Singh was in no position to eat yet. “I am waiting for him to eat something soon.”
The resident doctors attending to the patients on heat-stroke and heat-related illnesses on three floors of the new emergency block building said a majority of cases of severe heat-linked illnesses they had treated the past week included “car drivers, auto rickshaw drivers, security guards, wall painters, ragpickers, and cooks,” all of whom either work outdoors, or are directly exposed to intense heat….
https://www.themigrationstory.com/post/in-a-delhi-heat-ward-a-lonely-battle-for-life
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